"“Tragedy on the stage is no longer enough for me, I shall bring it into my own life.” – Antonin Artaud Artaud’s words reek of a feeling of immediacy for action—an action of conquest that has no predetermined goals. The tragedy, the everydayness of life, is what we (as anarchists) hope to bring into being through revolutionary tactics, theory, praxis, and a whole tool kit of other methods. The very everydayness we hope to achieve (that overwhelming desire for a revolutionary dance party on Wall St.) is stifled by our own positions as spectators. The will-to-revolt has been lost, or maybe it never existed. But American anarchism is often a concept greeted with regret, despair, and drastic hope.
Our spectatorship has become a social phenomenon: a beautiful hope that we cling to while reading the headlines just praying that the revolution spreads. It is not our hope that has landed us in the precarious position we are in, but our lack of imagination. We have failed in our attempt to connect the actions of the Greek revolutionaries with our own local actions. American anarchists have refused out of their own derangement to step up. We begin to hear same regurgitations over and over: “I hope the insurrection spreads to America”; “I think it would be amazing if the government collapsed!” But our words are cheap compensations for our lack of action. What makes us any better than the apolitical middle-class family unit that spends their lives chained to a television?
Inasmuch as individual actions are concerned, theory has evolved as much as it could ever be imagined since the spontaneous revolts of ‘68. There is not an absence of a framework for everyday revolt—so what is the cause of our degeneration into spectators? There is probably no absolute answer, but it seems to be some mix of discouragement and anxious hope for the coming insurrection. Anarchists that are genuinely concerned with action, revolution, or just plain old social change have the full capability to resist the State. Some even go as far as to claim that just meeting face-to-face is a form of resistance. However, the action necessarily at this point to catch up with the fervor of Greece is much different.
Direct action (no matter how romantic, imaginative, or subjective) is absolutely necessarily to spark any movement towards revolution. Some anarchists have been attacking banks, recruitment stations, and other government buildings; others graffiti slogans in populated areas or tear down fences on hills that prevent children from sledding. Even the most arbitrary action can be a beautiful act of revolt that reclaims the power of the individual from the State apparatus.
Greece and the actions surrounding it are divorced from our everyday lives and the sensory experiences that come to form our reality. Our struggle is one focused on this very reality, one we should never lose sight of. It is eternally more important that we fight for our everydayness, our Artaudian tragedy, before becoming spectators of international events. The world will progress on its own: it is we American anarchists that have forgotten our true aims. The revolution of everyday life is accessible to any individual and doesn’t require a large group of protestors to make a very real effect. The subversion of traditional American values is as far away as your front door.
Forget Greece: first we take Washington."
ORIGINAL SOURCE: Anarchist News
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